SINDELAR, THE FOOTBALL POET
— Jean Eskenazi | 07/10/1933 —

Viennese football player who swears by Sindelar.

Sindelar is both the best player in Austria and in continental Europe. Some of Mozart's compatriots will even tell you that he is the best centre-forward in the world.

I saw Sindelar again in Vienna. He was making an appearance at a sports goods store where he is a salesman, in the same way that Alec James is a department manager at Selfridge's in London.

SINDELAR.

Sindelar is twenty-nine years old. His large profile of a tortured eagle has something sickly and tormented about it. This pale-skinned man bears in his emaciated mask the marks of genius, like a poet of the Chatterton lineage. He seems to live only for football. It is his only ideal, his only support in life. All his thoughts are concentrated on an art which he attains in the most brilliant way.

The day Sindelar can no longer chase the diabolical little round ball, I'm afraid Sindelar will be like the goldfish torn from its bowl.

Sindelar's life? It has something poetic about it. He is bohemian, simple, modest and possesses great natural wisdom.

For two years Vienna was greatly amused by Sindelar and his secretary Zoleck, a player from Austria, who took care of all the housework, signing contracts, purchases, etc.

The indolent Sindelar, who, while pushing the pieces on the chessboard, thought of some new tactic to outwit his opponent.

For Sindelar is a great enthusiast for chess, which, in his opinion, has much in common with football. Is he not the author of this judicious definition of the round ball:

Football is a chessboard with living figures?

SINDELAR AND HIS GAME.

Sindelar is the best student of Kálmán Konrád, the greatest footballer that Austria has ever known and that Slavia has just attached as coach.

What is Sindelar's tactic? First of all, the search for simplicity and then the speed of execution. Sindelar does not like the "asthmatic" game. Nothing is more effective for him than large and rapid openings to the wings.

He is a supporter, like the English, of this adage: namely that it is up to the ball to run and not the men.

Sindelar is the purest product of the Viennese school, that style that combines elegance with speed, simplicity and efficiency. It was Hugo Meisl who transformed him. Before, Sindelar was an extraordinary player, certainly, but who only played for himself.

It was only three years ago that Sindelar, at 26, made his appearance in the Wunderteam.

Which proves that in sport, as in everything, you should never despair.

A MODEL.

After visiting Sindelar, Mr. Becske, the excellent director of Austria, and I went back down Mariehilferstrasse, Vienna's shopping street.

"Sindelar," my interlocutor told me, "has never been taken off the pitch or disqualified. That's the model for players."

"A few years ago, Austria was going through a difficult time. Slavia offered Sindelar a golden bridge to sign in Prague: 50,000 Czech crowns. Sindelar could leave. Nothing kept him here. He preferred to stay, thus showing great love for a club where he has been playing for ten years already."

"Believe me," Mr. Becske concluded, "you don't find players like Sindelar every day.""

Don't you think so?